How to Be Posh
ANNETTE TELLS TALES Poshness is always in style . . . Lessons from 18th Century Britain and British America
Note from Annette
Welcome, new readers of Non-Boring History! And that includes those of you here at the kind recommendation of wonderful historian
! Or maybe you were drawn by one of my posts? Cool, but don’t think every post is the same. One of my goals is to keep knocking my readers sideways, as I show you what history means to this academic and public historian.So come on in! Grab a popcorn from the Snack Gnome*, and before you decide whether or not Non-Boring History is for you, I suggest you read the orientation post, which quickly brings you up to speed on what Non-Boring History is, who I am (a Brit, for one thing), and what reading NBH can do for you!
*Gnomes keep things humming along at Non-Boring House, here in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Just roll with this for now.
THANK YOU Nonnies, the monthly and annual subscribers in the US, UK, Canada (see? I see you, Canadians!) and around the world who make Non-Boring History possible.
Right now, I’m up to my elbows in work, and although what I do may not seem like work, you bet your bippy it is, and jolly skilled work, too. I'm reading a painfully scholarly book. It’s also fascinating, and that’s why I plan to translate it for you (in part) into an entertaining NBH post. This will be no mean feat, because the author uses ghastly words like paradigm and discourse a lot (nah, I won't be doing that to you). Her subject? The history of a kind of medical treatment that isn’t, um, actually medical, which is very popular in the US, and known around the world. The author studies this as a form of religion, which should annoy about 10% of my American readers, and this is why historians don’t get invited to parties.
PLUS Coming up, a Saturday post ( these are always exclusively for paying subscribers) , about a little bit of history helping us to see buildings, buildings we somehow use and yet never notice. Like a very boring subway [UK Tube] station.
Today, here’s an updated version of a story I think is worth repeating: How to Be Posh, which first appeared at Non-Boring History in August 18, 2021. Enjoy!
Annette
Annette Laing, PhD, yes, in actual history, not in Wombat Studies, is author/editor/publisher of Non-Boring History (NBH), assisted by her long-suffering husband, a small team of Gnomes, the work of her fellow academic and public historians, and the Nonnies, her beloved supporting subscribers at NBH.
ON WITH THE SHOW!
How To Be Posh
Judgy Judgy McJudge Judge
Have you ever wandered into the company of rich people, and felt judged?
Don’t worry! You probably were judged! And even if you win the lottery, you will still be judged, unless you behave like other rich people. And they won’t invite you to their posh parties unless you do. This is a problem, because, meanwhile, if you won the lottery, your old friends and relatives will now be hitting you up for money, and so you need to dump them for new, rich friends, lickety-split.
All this is to say that, just in case you do one day win the lottery, you may want to start now finding out how to be posh, how to act like you belong to the club, and, in short, to relearn everything in life, from what to wear to how to think.
Oh, and the first rule of poshness? Unless you're already rich, nobody will let you know the rules. And, as you may have already noticed, the rules do change. Right now, you might be forgiven in thinking that poshness has vanished, but, I assure you, it hasn’t. It’s just changed, without announcement. Even a newly rich person with no apparent poshness typically enrolls (or her) kids in a posh educational establishment, to make the right friends, and absorb the rules. At least, that’s still true now. The future? Let me remind you, as I often do: Despite what you may have heard, historians are rubbish at predicting the future. If we seem to get it right, that’s more luck and spin than anything else.
Today, we're meeting a few newly rich people who wanted to be posh, and how they went about it.
George and the Garter King-at-Arms
George lives in Virginia. He is proud of his British heritage. He has already ordered hundreds of bookplates from London, featuring his family’s coat of arms. This makes him feel very posh. Still, he wants to make his poshness official.
That means George needs to verify not only his family’s coat of arms, but also his family tree. So he contacts the Garter King-at-Arms, the official in charge of heraldry in London, who is appointed by the King, the real one. The current Garter King-at-Arms is Sir Isaac Heard.
Sir Isaac is happy to help an American. However, George doesn’t give him much to go on. He sends George a form to fill out, with whatever family history he knows, but George doesn’t know much. He can trace his family to about 1657, when two of his ancestors settled in Virginia. Unfortunately, he has no idea who their parents were.
George is clearly embarrassed about this. He hasn’t put a lot of time into his family history, he admits to Sir Isaac, because he hasn’t been all that interested in genealogy before now. Even if he had been interested, he explains, his “busy and active life” would have prevented him from doing any actual research.
George can only pass along to Sir Isaac what he has heard from other family members:
“Our ancestors who first settled in this country came from the northern counties of England, but whether from Lancashire, Yorkshire, or one still more northerly . . .”
Pause. In other words, he doesn’t know.
Sir Isaac, however, won’t give up that easily. He’s an experienced genealogist and heraldry expert, and he starts looking for George’s family in several counties.
Sure enough, he finds George’s ancestors.
They weren’t from the north of England, as George had believed, but from Sulgrave, a little village in the English Midlands. Sir Isaac investigates further, and goes on a field trip (or his assistant does, more likely) He finds the family coat of arms carved on their gravestones!
Unfortunately, the coat of arms that George had already had printed on his bookplates is quite a bit different from the drawing Sir Isaac sends him from London.
However, George thanks Sir Isaac for all his hard work, and asks him to let him know if any more information turns up about his British pedigree.
Americans love being descended from posh British people. I don’t know how you manage it, American friends, because, like most Brits, I have mostly found dirt-poor farmworkers in my family tree until about 1850, when they were promoted to factory workers.
Still, George’s story is pretty cool. You see, his correspondence with Sir Isaac Heard took place in 1792. At that time, George Washington happened to be President of the United States of America.
You may have heard of George Washington. You may also be familiar with his (then) brand new country. That’s the one in which “all men are created equal”, whose founders had turned their back on silly titles like “Sir” and “Lord”. George himself, you would think, was posh enough, being President, not to have to prove his poshitivity, a word I just made up and rather like.
But no. George desperately wanted to know if his British ancestors were Sirs and Lords. That's why he got in touch with the man appointed by the monarchy to verify his family coat of arms, so he could use it as a logo, and feel confident slapping it onto bookplates, silverware, the side of his carriage . . . Well, everywhere people would see it, really. With his certified coat of arms, George Washington, Revolutionary War hero and President of the United States of America, had finally achieved a lifetime goal: To be endorsed as posh by the British establishment.
If You’re So Rich, How Come You Ain’t Posh?
Even today, being rich doesn't automatically make you posh.
Ask US President Donald Trump, whose posh Palm Beach, Florida, neighbors once turned their noses up at him, his colorful interior design, his taste in foods.
Ask Kate Middleton's mum, Carole, grandmother to the heir to the throne, who was mocked in the tabloid press for saying “pardon me” to the late Queen Elizabeth, her daughter’s mother-in-law. Saying “Pardon me” (like saying “toilet” instead of lavatory or even “loo”) still marked you as definitely not posh in early 21st century England. This helps explain why Mrs. Middleton, a former flight attendant, who, along with her husband, made her fortune selling party supplies, sent her daughter to posh boarding school: To ensure that she became posh. Apparently, this plan succeeded beyond the Middletons’ wildest expectations.
Keeping Up Appearances
Ever watched Keeping Up Appearances, the 1990s Britcom? You should. Mrs. Bucket (which she tells everyone is pronounced Bouquet), is a lower middle-class woman of working-class background, who tries very, very hard to be posh. Too hard. Much of the humor is grounded in how Mrs. Bucket [Bouquet!!] can’t get it right. While many Americans love Keeping Up Appearances, some of the subtleties are likely lost in translation: Mrs. Bucket calls her living room a “lounge” (that’s a huge giveaway to posh Brits, right there, that she’s not posh), proudly invites people to her “candlelight suppers”, and boasts of her expensive china.
The show is popular around the world because, well, we all know a Mrs. Bucket. Indeed, I found myself explaining Keeping Up Appearances to a US Deep South version of Mrs. Bucket, by her request, at dinner in her house, which became slightly awkward.
Today, Mrs. Bucket would be completely lost, because, even in the 90s, the rules were changing. Suddenly, posh schoolkids were sounding less like the Queen, and more like Jamie Oliver, while Jamie Oliver sounded a bit like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. That’s how poshness works: Posh people keep shifting the goalposts in odd directions. The whole point of poshness is to exclude. That’s the only way poshness can remain . . . posh.
Where Did Poshness Come From?
Poshness is as old as people, but in British history, it was royalty, of course, who set the ultimate standards long ago. Monarchs needed to impress people with their wealth. Their tastes in houses, clothing and other belongings influenced the rich and powerful people closest to them: the aristocracy, followed by the gentry, their often title-less but still posh cousins.
For centuries, to be posh in England, you needed land, lots of it. Land was the basis of your wealth and power in an agricultural society.
But land wasn't enough. You also needed a big impressive house and stuff to fill it with. Even so, this only made you rich, not posh: It didn't guarantee that people would look up to you.
The number one requirement of being genteel (posh) could not be bought: Pedigree. You needed posh ancestors, showing that you had the right to expect respect.
Pedigree mattered very much to monarchy, of course, to show everyone that they had the right to rule, even if their claim to the throne was a but slim (see Tudor, Henry, AKA Henry VII. And Henry VIII). But pedigree, a posh family tree, also mattered to aristocrats and gentry, who ruled over smaller areas and populations. Showing off portraits of your ancestors, your family tree, and your family’s coat of arms in your house and elsewhere was very important.
As a posh person, you did not work for a living. You rented your land to farmers, and let them get on with the work of farming and hiring their own workers. Meanwhile, you lived a life of leisure, developing appreciation for art and music, and superior cultural traits, like kindness and hospitality, because you could afford to be nice.
To show everyone else you had a special role in society that didn't require you having to work, you had to have not only the right ancestors, but the right house, the right stuff to fill it with, the right education, and the right manners.
By the 18th century, thanks in large part to transatlantic trade (including the slave trade) there was a lot more money floating about, a lot more newly rich British people who aspired to be posh.
And some of them lived in America.
From Zero to Posh in 60 Years
Virginia in 1720 was a profitable place for a very few. Yet even if a tobacco planter had loads of land, and owned dozens of enslaved people and/or indentured servants* to grow tobacco, he wasn't automatically posh.
*CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE AT NBH when you become a Nonnie, an annual or monthly subscriber! What’s an indentured servant? What was his or her life like in the 18th century, as America mostly converted from indentured servitude to slavery? Meet Brit William Moraley!
For one thing, that rich landowner still probably lived in a one or two-room house: Only about 10% of the richest Virginians occupied more than one room in 1720.
Take that in for a moment. Living in huts with hardly any possessions, rich people before the 1720s were often hard to tell from poor people. Why were they living like this? Who did they think they were? Warren Buffett? Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha”, is an American billionaire investor who lives a relatively simple life, drives an old car, and gives a lot of his money to charity (or plans to). Rich early Virginia planters had no charitable goals, unless the charity is question was them. They were pouring all their profits back into buying more land, plus unfree labor to work it, meaning British indentured servants and enslaved African people. Their real estate without these workers had no value: Unlike posh people in Britain, rich Brits in America couldn't just rent out their land, because why would anyone want to rent from them when they could get their own land for cheap or free?
But as African slavery arrived on a grand scale, starting at the end of the 17th century with a growing supply of people shipped across the Atlantic, things in Virginia changed fast, especially for the rich planters who owned lots of the best land. The best land? That was by the coast, an area with rivers and ocean to more easily transport their tobacco to Britain, as required by British law, and especially to London. These rich Virginians could also could afford to buy enslaved workers, to increase their productivity and profits. Now, they had more money to throw around.
That’s why, by 1730, we start to see grand two-story houses in Virginia, like the Hill-Carter family’s Shirley Plantation house, at the top of this post. Completed in 1738, this fab mansion was built from the profits of tobacco.
Once they had a grand mansion, it was time to start splashing even more cash, to show who was in charge in Virginia. Rich people began filling their new homes with silverware, furniture, books, and other signs that they belonged to the elite, the upper class, and that they lived very, very differently, not only from enslaved people, but also from other white people, including others who grew tobacco on small farms. A plantation, by the way, was a large-scale farm dedicated to producing a profitable cash crop: In Virginia, that was tobacco, and no wonder it was popular. It was addictive. More and more smokers back in Britain (most of them men) were getting hooked.
This change in Virginia society happened very fast. By the 1740s, the Virginia planter class had arrived, big time: They were not only rich, with land and large numbers of slaves. They were also powerful as a group, running not only local government, but also (with the exception of the governor, appointed by the King) Virginia government. They showed off this power with their grand houses stuffed with expensive items. Their homes said to everyone else, “We’re in charge here! No need to worry your pretty little heads thinking about things! We do that! Or else!”
But now the Virginia tobacco elite needed to go further. They needed to show that they deserved to be in charge. That meant, as a group, they had to acquire not only the stuff and the big mansions, but the manners, conversation, education, and opinions that would set them entirely apart from other people, making it seem that they were innately better than everyone else.
They managed to do that, over a period of about fifty years, by following the model set by the English elite.
These posh Virginians (and people throughout the colonies) thought of themselves more and more as British, sharing in the huge economic success of empire. But they didn't quite fit the model of poshness exhibited by posh people back in Britain, and that proved a much bigger problem than we might think.
Being Well Bred
In Britain in the 1700s, what separated the elite (mainly aristocrats), from the “vulgar” (i.e. the rest of us) was supposedly virtue, meaning values and morals like prudence, courage, and fairness. Because they did not work for a living, posh people, the theory went, had time to sit around developing their virtue by appreciating art, music, and books, and developing good taste. Because they had an independent income, the reasoning went, they could be politicians without becoming corrupt, and could also make important decisions for everyone else without being pressured. “Good breeding” didn’t just refer to the family tree (although, as we will see, it did), but to being posh. To repeat, the key part of all that for the elite in Britain was financial independence, being rich enough not to have to work, so they had lots of leisure time to become refined and cultured, although, in practice, a lot of them spent much of that time petting dogs and hunting animals.
But the Virginia elite did have to work. Sure, they no longer worked in the fields, as they had in the 17th century. But they were still involved in managing their plantations: Planting fields, assigning tasks to workers, and selling their harvests. Unlike posh Englishmen, who left farming on their lands to their inferiors, elite planters actively managed their planting businesses.
Still, they had a lot more free time than anyone else in Virginia, and they figured that was enough to start becoming posh.
But this wasn't enough to qualify them as posh according to the British standards of poshness they followed. Before Virginia planters could claim they were genteel (posh), they also had to present a pedigree, a family tree that showed they had the correct sort of posh ancestors. They couldn’t truly become genteel through merit, through their own efforts. Nope. They had to have the correct relatives, going back at least three generations.
Without that, they were still rich. But they weren't posh.
Obviously, this was a problem for Virginia planters. Sure, their ancestors probably weren’t poor, and often arrived from England with a fair bit of money to invest in land and workers. Contrary to what most Americans still assume, very few of the actually poor indentured servants who came to Virginia ended up rich, no matter how hard they worked: Then as now, you needed money to make money. Connections help. Which is why rich British-Americans became positively inbred in Virginia, as we shall see.
The problem for wealthy 18th century Americans was that their ancestors weren’t rich or posh. Rich tobacco planters in 1730 typically had British parents and grandparents who had been middle class, like merchants, craftsmen, shopkeepers. No, their ancestors weren't poor riff-raff, but they also weren't posh aristos or landed gentry.
As it happens, the ancestor problem was also an issue back in Britain in the 18th century, for newly rich (but not posh) people. With all the money pouring into the national economy, more people wanted to be posh.
Daniel Defoe Has A Suggestion
Yes, that Daniel Defoe! British author of Robinson Crusoe fame, yes, but Crusoe wasn't the only thing Defoe wrote. He campaigned in print for decades to open up Posh World to wealthy “commoners”, people who didn’t have a posh family tree, or land. People, by an amazing coincidence, just like him, Daniel Defoe, newly-rich son of a candlemaker and butcher.
Defoe argued that people should be allowed to become genteel (that’s the proper word for posh, just sneaking that in there) by their own merit, or efforts. And although he was talking about people in England, you would think his argument would be very helpful to the colonial British American planter gentry, with their less than impressive ancestors.
But no. Surprise! Despite the fact that the Virginia planters’ circumstances were very different from those of the English gentry (they still ran their own businesses, remember) rich Virginians ignored Defoe. And yes, before you ask, his writings did cross the Atlantic: British America really was a thing, tied to London on every way, and Americans were reading British authors. Yet the American rich did not try to change the rules as Defoe had suggested, even though it might have been in their best interest. They stuck with the conservative old-school English idea that your gentility started with having posh people on your family tree, and a family coat of arms.
Getting Posh
So if rich Virginia planters didn’t know of any posh ancestors in their DNA, they needed to find them fast, or, failing that, invent them. Honestly, almost anyone of any British descent who researches family history, if they keep tracing all the lines in a family tree, will likely find a posho in their past. But for some, as we’ll see, that kind of research was too much trouble, compared to, say, guessing who you were related to.
Having found posh ancestors, one way or another, Virginia planters needed coats of arms to show instantly to everyone that their ancestors were indeed posh. It saved time. It meant they didn’t have to bring up their family trees in conversation at cocktail parties. This was also wise if they wanted to be invited to cocktail parties. Not that cocktail parties existed in the 18th century, but you get my drift. They needed to show off that coat of arms on their silverware, for example, so that anyone who came to dinner was reminded that their hosts were part of the elite, every time they lifted fork to face.
Coats of arms weren’t just a silly bit of snobbery, you see. Coats of arms served to show, in a shorthand everyone recognized, who the people in charge were, and that they deserved to be in charge. I’m amazed the poshos didn’t wear their coats of arms on sweatshirts and hats. Oh, wait, they kind of did. But first, they had to acquire those coats of arms. Let’s look at how the Fitzhugh brothers did that, shall we?
As early as 1687, rich Virginia tobacco planter William Fitzhugh was bugging his brother in England to come up with a family coat of arms, somehow. Since their dad had been a woolen draper, meaning the early equivalent of the owner of a fabric store, they were pretty unlikely to be entitled to proper heraldry.
BUT William’s brother in England actually found and mailed him a coat of arms in Virginia. Amazing!
Unfortunately, William’s brother seems to have pinched the coat of arms belonging to Baron Fitzhugh of Yorkshire. Not a relative.
Once he received the stolen coat of arms in Virginia, William Fitzhugh set about using it. He had it engraved onto his silverware, for example, so anyone who came to dinner would be left in no doubt about how posh he was. But he didn't stop there.
William also adopted the posh Fitzhughs themselves: His descendants in Virginia even named the family plantation Ravensworth, after the estate of the posh Fitzhughs, who I am going to guess had absolutely no idea that their family history had been appropriated by an American fabric store owner’s son.
Once Virginia planter families had the money, the house, and the coat of arms, it was time to start proving themselves posh through the use of their leisure time. They wrote witty letters (gosh, how droll!), held posh parties, played music, read books.
Most of all, they went shopping, usually online from London. This was the easiest way to show off poshness, honestly. By online shopping, I mean ordering long lists of stuff to be sent to America by ship, or, as we would say now, and not by coincidence, shipped.
Virginia planters didn’t just want to be accepted as posh in remote Virginia: Even they understood that they were in the back of beyond, with London as the center of their universe. As I said, they considered themselves truly British, since the colonies were part of the great British empire, governed from London (at least in theory, if not always in practice).
Most of all, the planters wanted to be recognized as posh and accepted by the aristocracy and gentry in Britain.
You might guess that this was going to be trickier than being posh to a colonial standard. And you would be correct.
Not Good Enough
Meanwhile, back in England, the aristocracy and gentry, posh people, seldom thought about the colonies and the rich people who made fortunes there. If they did, they thought of Barbados sugar planters, who tended to be the younger sons of old families from the British elite. Barbados poshos certainly met the pedigree standard. And sugar was an incredibly profitable product, more, even, than tobacco, so that helped. These British-Americans from Barbados* would be welcome at London parties. Many early rice planters in South Carolina had come over to the American mainland with sugar money from Barbados, so they often invited to parties in London, too.
*Britain’s empire in the 18th century included the West Indies and the mainland east coast of what’s now the United States. Don’t be deceived that these were in different categories in the 18th century just because the mainland colonies rebelled in the 1770s and got their independence, while the West Indies did not. In 1740, say, nobody saw that coming. Why didn’t the West Indies rebel? Long story for another day, but your first hint is that sugar was very, very profitable, more profitable than all the mainland British American products put together—yes, including tobacco. Sugar was, as we are finding out, highly addictive. See a theme emerging?
If British poshos ever thought about tobacco planters in Virginia, and they mostly didn't, they were not impressed by what little they knew. If they, for example, heard tell of a Virginia planter, and they didn’t immediately recognize his name as that of an old posh family, he was dismissed as a mere social climber. A nobody. And that was that.
Sure, Virginia tobacco planters were rich, and flaunted their pretendy coats of arms. But practically every member of the posh landed British elite who bothered to pay any attention to them knew they were faking it.
Sometimes, though, the Virginia planters could almost break down the wall between them and acceptance in England. British gentlemen who met young, second generation American tobacco planters in London might be confused by them. These Americans had posh clothes, English accents, manners, education, good taste, and posh friends. They fit in socially with the British gentry. Why? How? Because these young planters had been dropped off in England at age six or so, and educated ever since in English boarding schools and universities, not to return to America-- or see their parents— until their education was complete.
But posh Englishmen, confused, believed “breeding”, inherited poshness, was the only possible explanation for the young Virginians’ excellent manners and conversation. They must have posh ancestors. They simply must.
Most Virginia gentry were never put to the test. London is, face it, a very long way from Virginia. Even those young planters who were educated in Britain returned to America in their early twenties, where they were out of sight and mind of the British landed elite. Still, they remained posh gentlemen to each other, and to other people in Virginia, whether they had been educated in Britain or not. So by the 1750s, elite planters were undisputed leaders in the plantation societies of the South.
The fact that Westover, the biggest house in Virginia, owned by planter William Byrd, was only 1/10th the size of, say, Wentworth Woodhouse, the Marquess of Rockingham’s massive home in England, was neither here nor there. The Marquess would never cross the Atlantic to point out to Mr. Byrd that he had a bigger one. Ahem.
Monopoly
In colonial Virginia, tobacco planters were able to have the kind of monopoly of power over their institutions that English poshos could only dream of: They not only ran the churches and courts, but also colonial legislatures. They not only had power over enslaved people in their fields, but made huge profits from selling the tobacco those people grew.
In Britain, the posh landed elite had to share even political power with “commoners”, like merchants. But in Virginia, one small group of people controlled everything (even the governor, if necessary). And, unlike in Britain, they were all closely related to each other.
“One great tangled cousinry” is what historian Bernard Bailyn called the 18th century Virginia elite. This wasn’t the result of parents arranging marriages with other posh families: Young members of the planter elite chose to marry each other because they had practically nothing in common with anyone else in Virginia. They had a monopoly on education, leisured ways of life, and loads of money.
The emerging Virginia elite of the 18th century regarded anyone who wasn’t part of their group as beneath them. In other words, they were not only posh, defined by their education, manners, power, and possessions, but were very snotty about it. That snottiness is perhaps our best clue that they knew, in their hearts, that they really weren’t posh.
Virginian poshos were often first generation Americans, whose wealth was created by their fathers. Some were even first generation rich: Thomas Sumter, poor guy from the Virginia backwoods turned tavernkeeper, married a rich plantation-owning widow, and joined the elite.
Thing is, there’s a puzzle: Why was poshness such an obsession for the planters, when they were obviously rich and powerful?
Look, they knew they were Johnny-come-latelies. They craved affirmation that they were legitimate, real, rulers. And most of all, they craved affirmation from posh people in England. The standards for poshness the planters followed were set in London, not Williamsburg.
There were practical reasons for their obsession, too. Many posh Americans visited Britain, and, as I mentioned, educated their children at English boarding schools (including Eton). Some even moved across the Atlantic to take up residence, like South Carolinians Ralph and Alice Izard (rhymes with lizard). The Izards made sure to fit in there, because they preferred to live in exciting, fun-filled London, rather than in mosquito-ridden South Carolina rice swamps, among the enslaved people whose backbreaking work paid their bills. I cannot imagine why. Ahem.
It was very important to Americans who spent time in England that they got invited to posh parties in London. That meant they had to meet British standards of poshness. No cheating. No fighting the system.
In fact, even Daniel Defoe, a non-posh Brit in Britain battling for recognition in England by the British elite, didn’t actually walk the walk of his own argument, by insisting on being accepted as a posh person based on his personal merit.
In real life, Defoe worked to be accepted as posh the old-fashioned way. He claimed to be from a posh old family, probably dating to the 1066 Norman conquest (the ideal origin), and that his family's original name was De Beau-foe, which he totally made up, but nobody could go online to check.
Defoe also suggested he might be kin to Sir Walter Raleigh, famous explorer and friend of Elizabeth I. Finally, Defoe even began to display his coat of arms in his books. He probably designed it himself.
George Washington’s Path to Poshness
George Washington was never poor. He came from a wealthy family with plenty of land and slaves. However, he didn't start out as a member of the elite, either. He wasn’t sent to England for his education, unlike his older brothers. When George’s father died, George inherited “only” a modest farm and ten enslaved people. While this made him pretty well off, it didn’t actually make him a member of the Virginia elite.
Long, long before he wrote to London to check on his coat of arms, however, George Washington was studying guides to How to Be Posh, gobbling up the new 18th century rules of becoming genteel. That process started early, when he was 14, because he had acquired posh in-laws with whom he wanted to fit in. Young George copied from a book one hundred and ten rules of polite behavior, to be sure he would be welcome in posh company, and not commit massive faux pas. Rules like these:
“If others talk at table, be attentive, but talk not with meat in your mouth.”
And
“When in company, put not your hands to any part of the body, not usually discovered.”
In other words, when in polite company, don’t talk with your mouth full or scratch your bum.
Washington's fortunes were vastly increased by his marriage to Martha Custis, a rich Virginia widow with several kids, which made her an easier catch for him, with his modest wealth, than a single young woman would have been. Washington hit the jackpot with this marriage: 15,000 acres, 200 enslaved people (that’s a lot) and $100,000 cash, making him a multi-millionaire in 18th century terms.
Washington’s lessons in poshness had paid off. But they weren’t enough for him. As Washington’s star rose in Virginia society with his marriage to Mrs. Custis, he also became increasingly concerned with distinguishing himself firmly from the riff-raff. He dismissed the other farmers of the Shenandoah Valley, where he owned land and leased it to those same farmers, as “an uncouth set of people”. He would show this riff-raff who was boss, by filling his big new house with impressive stuff.
Washington also went shopping for posh stuff. He sent orders to Robert Carey, a London merchant who handled the sale of his tobacco crops, with lists of all the cool merch he wanted from the city. Since he was shopping sight unseen, Washington had to trust Carey to buy for him. This was not ideal for a member of the Virginia elite: Part of being a gentleman was not to have to depend on others. So, like other tobacco planters, Washington convinced himself that Carey, whom he had never met, was both a gentleman and a friend, who was just sort of doing him a favor by doing a bit of shopping for him.
Washington told Carey that he wanted everything he bought to be “in the newest taste.” In other words, he wanted what was hip and cutting-edge, not last season’s leftovers.
Washington’s 1759 shopping list even included a fancy wooden loo:
1 Mahogany close stool case in the newest taste, with place for chamber pot, etc.
One wonders what use a wooden loo would have been without a chamber pot, but I digress.
Among Washington’s other stuff requirements were a “fashionable” set of dessert glasses, four “fashionable” china candleholders, a “fashionable” man’s suit, and a half dozen pairs of a specific brand of men’s shoes, “made by one Didsbury”, a fashionable shoemaker, I assume. Washington also insisted on four chair cushion covers “to make the whole furniture of this room uniformly handsome and genteel.”
George Washington clearly wasn’t interested in pursuing uniquely Virginian or American tastes. Posh Virginian and American tastes were the fashions of faraway London, reinforced by breathless fashion reports in the colonial newspaper, the Virginia Gazette.
Washington bought more and more expensive London things. In 1768, Washington wrote to Carey with very specific instructions for buying a new carriage (think fancy car), with “good quality” leather seats, and enclosing a picture of his coat of arms (which had yet to be verified, of course) to be painted onto the carriage sides, to show beyond a doubt that he was now posh.
Same Old, Same Old
Fifty years after Daniel Defoe first came up with the idea of basing poshness (gentility) on merit, posh Americans in Virginia were still continuing to do the same old things that they hoped would persuade British poshos to let them join the club. They practiced reading their Latin and Greek, played and sang refined music, read books, and wrote witty letters.
Most of all, though, they bought stuff. Carriages, clocks, carpets, desks, chairs, tables. They could hardly engage in the British fashion for drinking tea without buying a posh tea table, could they? Not to mention a silver teapot, cups and saucers (think Wedgwood), a matching sugar bowl, milk jug . . . and so on, in a never-ending parade of new possessions, in the latest London styles. Yes, there were American craftsmen knocking out silver teapots, but those weren’t from London, knockoffs, really, so they weren’t proper posh.
Choose Your Own Adventure at Non-Boring History, when you’re an annual or monthly subscriber! Wondering why I said “Think Wedgwood”? There’s a post about that!
Americans played the game by the old rules as long as they could, because they didn’t write the rules. For decades, like George Washington, all the elite Virginia planters sent their tobacco to London, where the merchants they dealt with, entirely by letter, bought the items on their shopping lists and shipped them to Virginia, offering credit to the planters if the value of the tobacco they’d sent didn’t quite cover everything on their wishlists. Planters convinced themselves that these London merchants with whom they corresponded were gentlemen and friends. In short, pre-fame, pre-American Revolution, pre-Presidency, George Washington was a typical posh Virginian: A bit deluded about his relationship with Britain. Cough.
Desperately Seeking Acceptance
Virginia planters who visited England had long found themselves talked down to. As we saw, many in the English elite had decided that nobody respectable from their class would have gone to America, and that these colonists were not really gentlemen.
Virginia-born planter William Byrd II was living in London in 1723. He reported that “fine ladies'“ in London told him that living in the colonies was basically like being “buried alive”. Well, let's be fair. They weren’t wrong. When comparing the many entertainments of London and the charms of English country estates, with the questionable appeal of a remote plantation surrounded by malarial swamps, it’s not an unjust assessment. But still.
Byrd hoped to marry one young English lady, but her wealthy father wouldn’t hear of it. No matter how rich Byrd was, he was still a colonial. “But for God’s sake,” Byrd exclaimed in frustration, “where’s the difference between [my money being] in Virginia or in Berkshire [a county to the west of London] as long as I receive profits of it in London?” Sounds like he planned to stay in England if he married, doesn’t it? Yes, I think so, too. But it was not to be.
In Virginia, William Byrd was recognized as rich, powerful, and sophisticated. In London, he was considered a simple country cousin, a provincial commoner pretending to be posh. Yet he kept trying to be posh to British standards, even (and maybe especially) after he got back to America, and escaped the Posh British gaze.
In 1766, Ben Franklin, living in London (permanently, he probably wished), admitted that colonial Americans still looked up to English gentlemen. Try as they might, the American elite could not accept themselves as truly posh, but they tried, oh, how they tried, buying the latest stuff, painting, practicing their Latin, writing amusing letters, all in a futile effort to convince themselves that they belonged.
This effort to copy the English poshos is especially strange when you stop and think about the lives that Virginia planters led.
In England in summer, posh people looked out the windows of their tasteful mansions, perhaps through light rain, and saw fabulous gardens, maybe glimpsed suitably humble farmworkers stacking hay in the distance. Posh Virginians looked outside in summer, and saw tobacco being tended in searing heat by exhausted and angry Africans supervised by a man with a whip, as a violent thunderstorm approached.
The solution? Fantasy. Elite planters started to talk and think of their plantations as if they were delightful pastoral retreats, ignoring the hot climate and the horrific realities of forced labor all around them. Here, in their pretendy rural paradise, they believed, they could become virtuous, gentlemen of good character and good breeding.
Here’s another posh Virginia planter for you: Thomas Jefferson (yes, that Thomas Jefferson, the one who wrote the Declaration of Independence) designed and built his house, Monticello, on a hilltop away from white riff-raff, his neighbors in the Shenandoah Valley. He surrounded himself with art, books, and music. He hid his slaves’ service quarters, the kitchens and workshops, beneath the lawn. Enslaved people who worked in the house lived in cabins, close by for his convenience, but out of his direct view, while those who worked in the fields were accommodated even further away, about half a mile downhill, out of sight, and out of mind. Jefferson had achieved refinement in a rural area simply by pretending and believing in his own fantasy.
The English gentry and aristocracy who got wind of this sort of thing in America were not impressed. Increasingly, they began to think that plantation slavery corrupted American slaveowners’ morals, destroying whatever claim to virtue they had. And more and more in the 18th century, compassion, having concern for ones inferiors, was becoming a large part of what defined British poshness, something that shut out American upstarts. This was the era of the first ever charity benefit concert (music by Handel), for the newly-opened Coram Hospital for abandoned children in London. Slavery wasn't compassionate. This new way of thinking helped keep the posh club door firmly closed to Americans.*
*The door finally opened in the late 19th century, when British aristos needed money, and American poshoes wanted more British “class”: Winston Churchill’s mum, Jennie, and beloved actress Joyce Grenfell’s auntie, Nancy Astor, were both Americans. Nancy Astor, from Virginia, in 1919 became the first woman to sit as a Member of Parliament, by the way, yes, an American. Stay with NBH, and the Atlantic will start to shrink in your mind . . .
All Men Are Created Equal, So Long as They’re My Friends
If everything so far sounds a bit alien to you, you’re probably American. You almost certainly don’t know any members of the posh elite in America today. In fact, as historian Michal Rozbicki points out, quoting scholars Kenneth Prewitt and Alan Stone, Americans don’t even like the word elite, because it “comes close to denying that all men are created equal.” Americans don’t like the word class for much the same reason.
Yet it’s not a coincidence that billionaires’ kids today go to posh boarding schools, while yours almost certainly don’t. American readers, you have heard of Eton College, the posh English boarding school that Princes Harry and William attended, right? It’s actually less likely you have heard of Phillips Exeter or St. Pauls, two of the American equivalents of posh English schools. They exist, all the same, and I know, because I have visited them. St. Pauls even has an exchange with Eton.
From such schools, which offer an incredible education, many kids get into Ivy League colleges, where they form their own private clubs from which regular American kids who somehow make it into the Ivies are mostly excluded, and we aren't even talking about fraternities. These groups, known as final clubs, make fraternities look highly inclusive. The exclusion they practice is no longer on the basis of race, and indeed, posh schools and colleges have enthusiastically led cries for racial justice, because that, too,is now part of being posh. Exclusion now is entirely based on being posh, and what qualifies you as posh has changed a lot in the last few decades, and it is changing all the time. It has to, to keep people out.
I don’t blame you for being confused by all of this. Haven’t we been talking about the same 18th century Virginia planter class that produced not only George Washington, but Thomas “All Men Are Created Equal So Long As They're Not My Slaves" Jefferson?
Yes. All the elite 18th century planters ever wanted was for the club to open the door just enough to admit them, and then slam it shut immediately afterwards. They knew they couldn’t force that door open. The only way to get in was to play by the rules.
But even when they tried, the doors of the British gentry remained firmly closed to them. And that, as you know, is the sort of thing that's likely to make excluded people say, “Your rules are stupid, and I reject them.”
When London’s merchants, the planters’ imaginary gentleman friends in London, ran into economic crisis in the 1770s, and asked the planters to settle their debts, the planters were deeply offended. They felt betrayed by their “gentlemen” “friends”. They felt betrayed, in other words, by Britain.
I think you see where we’re going with this.
Only during the American Revolution did the American gentry start developing a new argument for what gave people virtue, the moral code that was the defining quality of gentlemen. They called it “the aristocracy of merit”. And it looked a lot like what Defoe had originally proposed.
But, like Defoe, the Virginia planters didn’t want democracy. That was a dirty word they associated with the riff-raff (i.e. the rest of us), with the people who lacked the necessary independence, education, and breeding to be trusted with power. They certainly didn’t want everyone to have a chance to join the club. Otherwise, what was the point of having a club?
In his day, George Washington was a controversial president, who did not disguise his contempt for ordinary people. How our memory of him changed will need to wait for another post. But, thanks to the ordinary people of America, who literally bled for the American Revolution, and thanks to the American gentry’s movement toward judging poshness on merit, not birth, Americans began to see power and poshness (or, when applied to the masses, respectability) as their birthrights: All men are created equal worked well with new ideas of democracy, even though the posh planters never meant that to happen, and only meant to be equal among themselves. Ordinary people wanted not to have to remove their hats when a posh person walked in. They wanted themselves to be referred to at the theatre as “ladies and gentlemen”. And they wanted votes.
Posh planters saw this change happening, and scrambled to prevent it. That’s why, until 1913, the Constitution required that US senators be elected by state legislatures, to prevent the non-posh from having too much power. Only with the passing of the 17th amendment did Americans get to vote directly for their US senators. And, of course, America still has the electoral college, so that Americans don’t vote directly for the President.
Elite planters played a major role in designing the United States of America. And yet, even after the Revolution, they kept on aspiring to British standards of gentility, as you saw at the beginning of this post, when George Washington wrote to London to verify his coat of arms and family tree. Meanwhile, as generations passed, the goal of becoming a virtuous gentleman of good breeding, which had always been about asserting the right to power, not based on deep belief in education and high culture, morality and good taste for their own sakes, began to fade. Young planters born to wealth carried on shopping, though, and some spent or gambled away their fortunes. New elites emerged, and they carried on aspiring to poshness.
The idea of being posh (or at least respectable), of being exclusive by whatever means from the riff-raff, never really faded. It just became the goal of more and more Americans, who could buy stuff, put on airs, and believe they had achieved respectability. They were, in short, posher than actual posh people.
And many Americans who were posh, or who aspired to poshness, never gave up casting eyes toward England. There’s a reason why, even today, ordinary Americans hope to find a duke in their genealogy. Why so many Americans go to England to tour castles and stately homes, and follow the doings of the Royal Family with greater interest than the vast majority of Brits. There is still a lingering self-doubt, a sense that, truly, British poshness remains the gold standard, even when, in reality, British poshness is no longer quite what it was. There’s a lot of money made in London, selling that dream to foreigners.
How To Be Posh
The whole point of poshness is not to give you a set of rules which, if you follow, you become posh, too. No, the point of it is to exclude people. If it stops working, if too many people study and lay claim to poshness, then the truly posh and powerful change the rules.
This is something the rest of us still haven’t figured out, as we save up for just the right brand of sneakers, or turn to influencers to see how we should dress, or look on, puzzled, as posh white people instruct, say, working-class and middle-class Latinos to identify themselves Latinx if they want to be part of posh schools and colleges’ idea of diversity, because how you think and speak and act is part of poshness, and it’s always changing.
And it’s not just about the wealthy. Dear readers, despite having grown up in England, home of snobbery, where I brushed against, and even knew, people of all ranks, I have never been snobbed as persistently, by so many different kinds of people, as I was in more than twenty years in Georgia. That value of ranking people, of defining a pecking order, has never left, and now is widespread in Southern society. But I am not letting the rest of America off the hook: In modern cities, those nests of ambition, it remains very much the norm to defer to the rich and powerful, while also trying to assert one’s place in the hierarchy in every way you can.
Poshness is everyone’s birthright, and everyone’s problem. It grew alongside competing ideas of democracy, of equality, and we keep trying to live with that total contradiction.
This post draws largely from my reading of Dr. Michal Rozbicki’s The Complete Colonial Gentleman: Cultural Legitimacy in Plantation America (University Press of Virginia). It’s heavy and academic for the general reader. Since, sadly, Dr. Rozbicki is no longer with us to point out what I got wrong, I warmly invite any academic historian who thinks I botched any of this to get in touch. I am also aware that both Rozbicki and I owe a debt to historians Richard Bushman and to T.H. Breen, whose book Tobacco Culture is a more readable look at Virginia tobacco gentry.
Enjoy Non-Boring History? Join us!
Not content with occasional free posts? When you're a Nonnie, a paying subscriber, you can be sure of getting every post! That includes Annette on the Road, about my historical travels in US and UK, and much more! Plus you gain access to the NBH Collection of almost five hundred posts in searchable format. You can also join the friendly no-drama Nonnie community, in the comments and in occasional online and even in-person meetups. And so much more insight into what history is, and what it can do for all of us, yes, you too! Details here:
Not ready to subscribe, but keen to support? Buy me a coffee!
I just finished “When London Was Capital of America” by Julie Flavell and it’s very much in tune with what you are saying here. Fascinating. Thank you.
I have also read Paul Fussell’s 1984 book on Class (I don’t know if you’ve read it) on American classes, and what he posits as the ultimate determinant of “higher class” (I know that’s not identical with posh) is freedom. I’m so rich/confident/successful that I can afford to break this norm. I can afford to wear stupid pants or have an idiotic nickname. Obviously that was a snapshot of American class at that time, but I think some elements of that desire to display (or to conspicuously NOT to display) class markers persist in both the US and UK and I’d love to know what you think?
Finally, having grown up in Georgia-adjacent Tennessee, I agree wholeheartedly that Southern society is extremely class obsessed, and believe that that has its roots in the eradication of slavery, which makes it qualitatively different from the UK obsession with class. Maybe?
Shazam! This is the perfect guide for us bumbling Americans. I KNEW we were being judged!